The Man in the Moss (82 page)

           
On all sides of them, up here in the tower, the night sky
was roaring with rain.
           
'How long?'

           
'Little under ten minutes. Impatient, are we, Joel?
Excited?'

           
'Why can't we just switch it off and go?'

           
'You see a switch anywhere, m' boy? Be on a circuit. Time
switch. Anyway, what good would that do? No. Have to smash it. Violence, I'm
afraid. Strength. What you're about, isn't it Joel? Strength. Might. No room
for namby-pamby, nancy-boy clerics on the Front Line, mmmm?'

           
'Yes,' Joel said. 'You're right. I'm ready for that.
Midnight, then.'

Back at the Rectory,
Macbeth said, 'What could happen to those people? Spell this thing out.'

           
Reaching the front door, he'd heard Cathy, on the hall
phone extension, saying, 'I don't know, I'll call you back ' Putting down the
phone to let him in.

           
Now, in the study, sitting on the edge of the piano
stool, she said, 'How can I say what could happen? You're nowhere in this game
until you accept that nobody can ever say for certain what's going to happen
and anyone who thinks he can, or that he can manipulate it, is due for a hell
of a shock one day.'

           
Macbeth said, 'What game?'
           
'Game?'

           
'You just said "in this game".'

           
Cathy shrugged. 'Life, I suppose.'

           
But he wasn't aiming to back off. 'OK, so what's the
bottom line? What's the worst thing could happen? Before you answer, bear in
mind what I saw in Scotland and that Moira is dead and that I don't believe I
have a great deal I care about left to lose.'

           
Cathy said calmly, 'I've lived in Bridelow all my life.
I've acquired knowledge of certain things, OK? And most of today I've been
talking very seriously to my father who's had to deal with things most
clergymen don't even read about.'

           
'Sure,' Macbeth said impatiently. 'What's your point?'

           
'Put it this way, if it was Pop in there, I'd be less
worried.'

           
'So what you're saying is, in the great metaphysical
ballpark, these guys are strictly little-league.'

           
'Let's say they're hardly ready for what they're up
against. They create their own universe, you see, these people. In this little
universe everything is down to the Will of God and all evil can be defeated
fast as a prayer. When
real
evil
shows its hand, it can be so traumatic they'll ...'
           
'Flip?'

           
'Flip is right,' Cathy said. 'Flip is the least of it.'
           
'Real evil?'

           
'Stanage is the man no one here ever talks about. Stanage
is evil beyond what ordinary people care to envisage.'

           
'OK,' Macbeth said. 'First thing, you can't stay here
alone, in case these people come back with some even more screwball ideas than
they had when they left.'

           
She looked kind of suspicious. 'What's the alternative?'

           
'I reserved a room at the inn. You take that. I'll stay
here.'

           
'Oh,' said Cathy. 'I see. The big macho bit. Mungo, how
can I say this? You're the one who shouldn't be here on his own.'

           
'What you want me to do, drive outa here? Things didn't
work out with Moira, let's draw a line under all of this? OK, we'll both stay
here. I'll take the sofa. I'll call Mrs Castle.'

           
'Mungo, I'm not going to stay here. I'm going to Milly's.
We have things to discuss and it's women only, I'm afraid. My advice is, take
your room at The Man, get some sleep. You look all-in. If there's anything you
can do, we'll ring you.'

           
'Oh,' Macbeth said.

           
'I promise.'

           
'Sure.'

           
This was Moira all over again.
Macbeth, just go away, huh?

'I dint recognize you.'
Willie was almost in tears. 'God help me, I didn't know who you were.'

           
'I think there was a similar problem,' Mr Dawber said
drily, 'in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Third Day.'

           
Willie could tell Mr Dawber was almost as pleased as he
was, but there was a shadow across it.

           
Mr Dawber said, 'Seeing somebody you thought was dead,
there's bound to be an element of shock. Take her home, Willie. Take her to
Millicent.'

           
'Cathy,' Moira said, unsteadily on her feet, Willie's
donkey jacket around her shoulders. Willie reckoned she also was in shock.
'Whatever you like,' he said. 'I can't believe this. I just can't believe it.
It's a miracle. It were on t'news. They found your car, bottom of a bank.'

           
'I'll tell you about it,' Moira said.

           
'It
was
your
car?'

           
'Oh, aye.'

           
Willie said, his voice rising, 'There were a body in it.
Police found a woman's body!' He stared hard at her in the torchlight.
           
He wondered if she knew where
she was. He wondered if she knew what had happened to her beautiful hair.

           
He was glad that when he'd touched her, putting his
jacket around her, she'd been stone-cold and damp, but solid.

           
Mr Dawber was silent. If he had any curiosity about the
body in the BMW he was keeping it to himself.

           
'Let's not hang about,' Willie said. 'Mr Dawber?'

           
'You go,' the old man said quietly. 'I'll carry on.'

           
'You're never going up there on your own, Mr Dawber, no
way.'

           
'I'll go if I want to,' Mr Dawber said, and there was a
distance in his voice. 'Nobody tells the headmaster what to do. Remember?'

           
'Aye, and if I arrive back there without you, Milly'll
kill me, you know that much, Mr Headmaster, sir.'

           
Mr Dawber said mildly, 'This lass'll be catching her
death if you don't be on your way.'

           
'Please, Mr Dawber.'

           
'Dic' Moira's body pulsed. 'Either of you seen Dic
Castle?'
           
'Not since the funeral,'
Willie said. 'Gone off teaching, Lottie said, in Stockport or somewhere. You
seen him, Mr Dawber?'

           
There was no reply. Willie swung his torch round.

           
'Mr Dawber!'

           
Mr Dawber had gone.

Roger Hall asked, 'Is he
mad?' The effects were wearing off; he didn't feel so elated, he did feel quite
relaxed. He did
not
feel there was
anything bizarre about this, why on earth should he?

           
Therese arched an eyebrow. She was not beautiful, but she
was compelling. He wouldn't kick her out of bed.

           
'Well, of course he's mad,' she said. 'Didn't that occur
to you?'

           
'He knows so much. How can you know so much, be so
learned, and be insane?'

           
The candles around the circle were half burned down. The
other people squatting cross-legged - the people Therese was 'helping', the
people who did what they were told - gazed dull-eyed into the candle flames and
never spoke.

           
'Look at it this way, Roger,' Therese said. 'You're quite
a learned man yourself. Would you say
you
were insane?'

Matt Castle slumped in his
chair. He wore a white T-shirt and was quite obviously and horribly dead, but
he didn't offend Roger Hall any more.

           
Roger laughed, 'But Stanage ... I mean, he does know what
he's doing?'

           
Dic Castle, something as primitive as chloroform
administered to him on a rag, was bound and taped into a metal-framed chair
with his wrists upturned. This did not offend Roger either. Nor did the
hypodermic on the table.

           
'He's done it before,' Therese said. 'Many years ago he
dug up a corpse, dead no more than a week, to tap her knowledge. It is, as
you've gathered yourself, all about knowledge. I
thought that was just wonderful - he went into Bridelow churchyard at night and
dug the old girl up with the sexton's spade. He was about nineteen at the time.
He just, you know, has absolutely no fear. That's half the battle, when you
think about it.'

           
'Yes.' She was right. Conquering fear was the vital first
step. Fear of being caught out. Fear of the law. Fear of humiliation.

           
'Look at Shaw,' Therese said. 'Shaw was a fantastically
good subject because he was so utterly screwed up, so socially backward to
begin with. Six months ago, Shaw was scared to walk into a pub by himself; now
he's killed two people and he's never been happier. He's out there now, and if
anybody tries to disturb us, he'll ... you know ... without a second thought.'

           
'And you're telling me all this.' He wanted to pinch
himself; he wanted to find the smell of Matt Castle nauseating. And he
couldn't.

           
'You're one of
us
,'
Therese said generously. 'You've been one of us for months. We'd never have got
the Man out of the British Museum without your help, and you'd never have had
the balls to get him out without ours. Come on, it's time. Have another drink.'

           
'I mustn't,' Roger said coyly, accepting a glass. 'One
final question. Therese ... what would have happened to Chrissie if she'd come
to the house with me?'

           
'Who ... ? Oh, the secretary. The divorced secretary with
no immediate family in the area.
That
Chrissie. Don't ask, Roger. Don't ask and you won't be told the truth.'

           
Therese poured them all a drink from an unlabelled brown
wine bottle. 'Cheers,' said a dull, empty-looking woman called
Andrea
. Therese moved to a bench in the corner of the
room opposite Matt and slipped a cassette into a black ghetto-blaster.

           
From the largest of several black bags, she withdrew the
Pennine Pipes and laid them at Matt's feet.

           
From the portable ghetto-blaster seeped the weeping,
far-away, opening notes of 'Lament for the Man'.
           
Dic squirmed.

           
From one of the bags, Therese took a pencil-slim plastic-
handled craftsman's knife, which she handed to Owen, a weedy, expressionless
man.

           
'I'll give you the signal,' Therese said. 'If it disturbs
you, you may tape his mouth.'

CHAPTER
VI

Refusing a whisky, Gary
Ashton said, 'I'm not saying I don't believe this, ladies. I've seen too many
weird things, put away too many weird people, we all do. Sometimes, you're
face-to-face with real evil, and you're laughing it off. You laugh off
criminals - blaggers, toe-rags. You don't think too hard about it, you're a
copper. Not a shrink. Not a priest. You nick the buggers, put them away, that's
where it ends.'

           
'Meaning you can't help us,' Lottie said.
           
'Far as the law's concerned,
Mrs Castle, there's one crime been committed here. Somebody's pinched an
archaeological relic.'

           
He'd sat there and he'd drunk coffee and he'd
sympathized. He'd trusted them, too, both of them. They were frightened, more
than if they'd been robbed. Although he knew bugger-all about wiring and such,
he'd been and examined the electrified gas-mantle and fitted a new bulb, and,
sure enough, it didn't come on. Fuse probably, he'd said. Where's the fuse-box?

           
And Lottie had said, never mind.
           
Truth was, the bloody thing
had fused at the wrong time and put the shits up two women who were already
mentally stressed.